Saturday, January 10, 2015

Expect to see more blank storefronts at your local mall—that is if you even go to the mall anymore. [...] sales are booming at shops like H&M, Zara, and Forever 21. The latter plans to double its number of stores in the next three years. So what happened? Why are teens no longer shopping at the stores that were once the hallmark of “cool”? 1. Individuality Trumps Logos Thanks to social media [...] They don’t need a store or brand to help dictate their look for them and aren’t relying on a single brand’s cachet. Instead, millennials favor individuality and shop accordingly. They’re less attached to brands and more willing to mix and match to create their own style, surveys by Nielsen, the Boston Consulting Group, and others have found. Even Abercrombie, whose name and moose logo were signature design embellishments for every shirt, has realized this. A spokesperson acknowledged to Reuters: “They no longer want to be a walking billboard of a brand. Individualism is important to them, having their own sense of style.” 2. “Faster” Fashion Dominates Stores like Zara, H&M, and Forever 21, which have much shorter waits between when clothing is ordered and when it goes on sale than traditional teen retailers, can roll out new clothing options each week, not each season, meaning they can quickly adopt trends from the catwalk and rapidly bring them to a sales floor. 3. Malls Are No Longer a Hangout Strict “parental supervision” policies, like the one Ford City Mall announced this week, make it impossible for some teens to hang out at the mall even if they wanted to, with requirements that anyone under 18 be accompanied by a parent on Friday or Saturday evenings. Roughly 80 other malls have implemented similar policies, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. 4. Budget Cuts Clothing simply isn’t the top spending priority for teens it once was. 5. Yoga Pants, Yoga Pants, Yoga Pants Sales for activewear topped $35 billion last year and now make up 17% of the total clothing market, according to market-research company NPD Group. Time Money